We will only use this email to keep you updated about On Think Tanks, its activities and its projects. I agree to the privacy policy and confirm my subscription

Join our network:

Support us

On Think Tanks was founded in mid 2010. It has evolved from a blog into a global platform dedicated to study and support policy research and policy research centres, or think tanks. The members of the On Think Tanks Team and its Advisory Board are spread out across 6 continents!

Please subscribe to On Think Tanks. The suggested contribution is GBP5.00 per month and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Interview

Ministers reflect: Ricardo Labó, former deputy minister for mining

This interview has been edited from Ricardo Labó’s representation at an event which brought together three Peruvian deputy ministers to reflect on their time in office. The event and this interview is inspired by the Institute for Government’s Ministers Reflect project.

You can read this interview in Spanish below.

Ricardo Labó: Certainly, for any new government, putting together a team is not easy. A thick numbers, there are 19 ministries, including the Prime Minister’s Office (Presidency of the Council of Ministers, PCM), so you need 19 ministers, 76 deputy ministers, heads of advisory cabinets, advisory cabinets, general secretaries and 114 general managers, at least. There we already have more than 200 people, that you must recruit in less than 2 months. In my experience, for a senior position, in the private sector, you need at least 4-6 months to recruit. The difficulty increases if you want to recruit professionals who are outside of the State.

Enrique Mendizabal: What was your approach to the position?

RL: In my case, although my entire career has been in the mining sector, when I was contacted I was working in the pharmaceutical industry; I had a few months on the job, so the decision was complicated, because it was a new job and challenge for me.

However, opportunities and invitations such as occupying a vice ministry and supporting your sector and country don’t come often. And I had support from the company, because as my general manager told me at the time, “when your country calls, you cannot refuse”.

In my case it was very interesting because I had been offered the vice minister role in two other sectors. The approach was as much on the part of the ministers as of the Prime Minister, himself. We had meetings, which would be like interviews and where it is clarified what the government is looking for in each sector. With one of the ministers and the Premier we knew each other from before but we had never worked together nor were close.

I had worked in the government in 2002-2003, so I knew how the Minem (Ministry of Energy and Mines) and the State functions, although the challenges had multiplied, in every sense. There are more companies, the perception of mining is more complex, there are more actors, the speed of information, decisions on the development of the sector no longer depend on a single ministry, etc.

For me, it was, on the one hand, a natural path in my career and, on the other, an opportunity to contribute to my country with all the knowledge and ideas that I had accumulated and analysed for more than a decade.

I consulted with my wife, I spoke with my general manager, with myself and well, I accepted. I think I said “yes” in two weeks. You do not have much time to decide.

EM: How well prepared were you – or how badly prepared were you?

RL: I think the question relates both to whether I was prepared or not, and to what were the issues that I had to face -what was the environment and political and technical support, etc. at the ministry.

I set myself a goal to be there at least 1.5-2 years, because I thought it was a period long enough to see results.

This is not a one-person job. I had to form a team of 8 to 10 people in a month. Happily, all were very committed.[Note]It is important to note that not all viceministers have the opportunity to appoint this number of advisers. Others are only allowed 1 adviser. This depends on the sector.[/note]

The preparation comes from years of experience. It is key to have previous experience in the public sector.

Being in the public sector is a mixture of satisfaction and frustration. There are things that work very fast, others, very slowly. What one has to be clear about is that you should never expect to be congratulated for a job well done. One has to find satisfaction within oneself.

EM: How were your first days and weeks in the position?

RL: Well, the first days -and the next 485- were very intense.

I joined in February 2017, the government was already 6 months old, so I did not have the “luxury” of the 100 days or the honeymoon. I would have liked to have been summoned in June 2016.

The first days you have to act very fast, because the country and the issues do not wait. The transfer is immediate and you assume responsibilities right away. You must attend to what was already urgent and plan and act on the immediate and medium-to-long term future. You must establish “quick wins” to gain credibility, both before the political and business and civil society.

What I did was to set up parallel agendas, with short, medium and long-term goals and objectives. Nothing complex, but it meets the needs of the sector and the country. In my case, the mining investment had been falling in the last 2-3 years, so it had to be reversed. I set myself 6 very clear objectives and an applicable strategy. For those interested:

Promote explorations;

Make the project portfolio viable;

Ensure the continuity of operations;

Establish a strategy for the integral management of environmental liabilities;

Formalise mining; and

Create a long-term shared vision for the sector

And I hoped to achieve this through:

A review of regulations;

Administrative simplification;

Differentiated treatments for each project and establishment; and

Creating the socio-political conditions for the investment to be made.

Certainly, since it was confirmed that I would be vice minister until I took office, I had time to think about my priorities, to begin to establish objectives and to look for the team, both internally and that I had to bring from outside.

EM: What were the main challenges you faced and how did you overcome them? What did you learn?

RL: The first learning is that you must act fast. Time is against you, because you do not know if you will be there tomorrow. Especially, in an environment like the one that we lived in Peru in 2017. I worked for 4 ministers (secretaries of state).

The main challenges were both internal and external. Internal, mainly: coordination between areas within the Minem and between ministries. How to face it, taking the initiative to put everyone on the table, align them, educate them and press them, too.

External, having to attend to multiple stakeholders at once, each with their political, social, and economic agenda. I had to combine and balance each of those interests, but, above all, watch over the State.

I can share a couple of anecdotes. One on the Michiquillay+ public tender process. This is something you can plan, but you do not know if it will come through in the end. We worked on it for more than a year, it was a project in a complex area and in a complicated political environment. We did not know until the very end if there were going to be two bidders, so we suffered until the last second. It almost cost me my position in March and a year later it had to be successful.

Another anecdote that I share with a colleague in the Ministry of Health (Minsa), relates to a mayor and a group of protesters who had chained themselves to the bars of the Minsa. I was relatively used to dealing with social issues, but I remember my colleague saying “Ricardo, we did not learn this at [university].”

EM: Is it true that the government does not make informed decisions? What kind of information is the most useful? Useful for what? How do you access it?

RL: It depends who’s in charge. But you always have to make decisions with limited information and in limited time.

That is why it is important to put people in these positions who have experience in the sector and who themselves have much of the information to make decisions and feed on those provided by the State and other sources.

Now, the State handles a lot of information, the challenge is to process it adequately for decision making. The information is very rich. We use less than 10 variables, but we collect more than 80. I left an area of ​​information analysis to feed the design and implementation of public policies. Hopefully the new administration will keep it.

You must manage not only statistical information but also information about and from companies, different leaders, organisations, etc. You must know what their agendas are.

In the mining sector, what I found is that there was little planning, it was very reactive and the State was almost at the mercy of the international markets and the appetite of the companies to make the investments. I left the ministry with another vision that I hope will continue.

EM: What was it like to leave the government?

RL: In my case, as I mentioned, I was already down to my fourth minister and at a juncture where 100% of the ministers and 80% of the vice ministers in the cabinet had changed. In the end it was a political decision.

I get pleasure in knowing that each and every one of the objectives that I set for the vice ministry have not been changed and that the road map remains in place. Certainly, it remains to be seen if the new people in the ministry will apply it, in what way and with with whom.

EM: What have you done since? How have you adapted to “civilian” life?

RL: In Peru, we have a legal limitation to return to the industry of the sectors we have been in charge of for a year. This limits what you can do. +But those are the rules of the game and you know them in advance. In my case, I have returned to teaching.

And I’m doing some consultancies that are not forbidden..

EM: What have you learned from this experience? And what recommendations could you make to the State and to future vice ministers?

RL: There are many lessons that I have learned. But if I had to give some advice to future vice ministers, I would say:

Develop or seek a strong human group, both from among the permanent bureaucracy, as well as people brought in from the sector.

You will have to improvise and make the best decisions in a short time, with a lot of pressure and limited information.

Set goals that are shared and generally accepted and become the goals for everyone.

Coordinate better between sectors, at least in a sector as cross-cutting as mining.

Recognise that politics are always present.

Do not forget that the sacrifice is not just for one, but for the family.